Within the printing and photocopying industries there has been a great need for various types of sheet handling equipment, including stacking and jogging apparatus. Numerous sorting, collating, and jogging devices, created in an attempt to meet that need, have been disclosed in issued patents. Commonly assigned patents Fagan et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,774,906) and Greene et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,944,217) disclose two types of paper sheet sorting and collating devices having various conveyor belt systems, deflecting mechanisms, and multiple receiving trays.
Fornell et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 2,922,640) discloses a collating machine having a traveling drum depository or bin.
Schulze et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,709,480), Post et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,802,694), Drexler et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,841,754), Lawrence (U.S. Pat. No. 3,937,459), Cross et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,973,769), Cross et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,977,667), Tusso et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,988,018), Cross et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,990,695), Tates (U.S. Pat. No. 4,204,727), Kamath et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,221,379), Breuers et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,228,995), Sterrett (U.S. Pat. No. 4,248,525), Kaneko et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,344,614), Hatakeyama (U.S. Pat. No. 4,352,490), Burke (U.S. Pat. No. 4,428,572), Miyashita et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,469,323), Watanabe (U.S. Pat. No. 4,498,665), Masuda et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,515,458), Kasuya et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,530,593), and Tankano (U.S. Pat. No. 4,578,582) disclose various sorting or collating devices wherein the paper sheets are deposited into vertically indexed, generally horizontal receiving trays.
Worswick (U.S. Pat. No. 2,919,917), Mitsumasu (U.S. Pat. No. 4,015,841), Maul (U.S. Pat. No. 4,232,861) and Altmann et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,318,542) disclose sorting or distributing devices having a means to horizontally transport paper sheets through the apparatus and deflect the sheets into horizontally indexed, vertically inclined sorting or receiving bins. The transporting means include pinch rollers and/or conveyors.
The following disclosures relate to jogging devices:
Rehm (U.S. Pat. No. 3,166,313) discloses a device for stacking and jogging vertically oriented material, such as mail shipments, against a stationary wall. A single brush roller having multiple elastic bristles engages the lower portions of the shipments, moving them against the stationary wall. Two circular discs are provided on the roller above and below the bristles to limit the flexing movement of the bristles in the axial direction of the roller.
Zinn (U.S. Pat. No. 3,385,457) discloses a mechanism having a stop plate which experiences intermittent, lateral, inward and outward movement to tap one side of the top sheet into alignment with the other sheets in a stack.
Sevak (U.S. Pat. No. 4,046,371) discloses a sheet stacking device used to stack documents on edge as they are serially ejected into preselected sorting pockets. A pair of spaced-apart paddle wheels, coaxially disposed subjacent to the pocket, rotate in 90 degree steps through apertures formed in the pocket to kick the trailing end of each document toward a movable, biased backup plate.
Haberstroh (U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,472) discloses a rotating disc having one or more flexible strips which rotate between vertically stacked documents.
Snellman et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,713) discloses a sheet jogger which mechanically taps one side of the top sheet against stops to align the sheets in a stack.
Garavuso (U.S. Pat. No. 4,359,219) discloses a direct control paddle wheel apparatus for document corner registration including a paddle wheel with multiple blades that drive a document into registration with intersecting walls. The blades, as they rotate, are channeled to drive a document from side to side, as well as straight ahead depending on the shape of the plate or barrier.
Kanoto (U.S. Pat. No. 4,589,654) discloses a device for aligning conveyed sheets against two substantially orthogonal surfaces by using a main and an auxiliary rotatable paddle member. Each paddle member has a plurality of flexible members. The main paddle member is positioned to impart a sheet draw-in force in the direction of intersection of the two orthogonal surfaces.
Raybuck (U.S. Pat. No. 4,667,809) discloses an apparatus for aligning a moving stream of overlapping signatures. A pair of elongated endless jogger belts, mounted on supporting bases on opposite sides of the moving stream of sheets, tap the sides of the sheets into alignment with one another.
These disclosures are believed to illustrate the general scope of the prior art related to paper stacking and jogging equipment. The applicants submit that these disclosures, taken alone or together, do not teach the concepts embodied in this invention.